J. Timothy’s hosts a 40th anniversary party on Feb. 26. Tickets are $40 to benefit the John Huwe Memorial Scholarship at Plainville High School.
In the summer of 1980, during a tough economic recession, Tim Adams and Jim Welch were a few months into ownership at Plainville’s Cooke’s Tavern, and times were lean.
The partners, then barely 30 years old, had opened their first restaurant in the historic space on Feb. 26, 1980. They would trade off tasks nightly; one would bartend, one would cook. But customers weren’t streaming through the door of the tavern, originally built in 1789. On slow nights, Adams and Welch would sit on the stone wall outside of the building, look toward the nearby intersection and hope fervently that they’d see a car put on its blinker and turn into the restaurant’s parking lot.
Forty years later, that parking lot is consistently full, and many of those cars turning off New Britain Avenue have out-of-state plates. During those four decades, Adams and Welch transformed that struggling special-occasion restaurant into what’s now J. Timothy’s Taverne — not just a beloved casual tavern with elevated pub fare, but a renowned destination for chicken wings, featured multiple times on national food websites and network television.
Early struggles
In 1980, the owners couldn’t imagine the success they would see in later years. As first-time restaurateurs, they took over Cooke’s, known for generations for its special-occasion fare and white tablecloth service. Though they realized casual restaurants were doing best financially, they felt they needed to stick with the brand the area knew best.
“Because it had been Cooke’s Tavern since 1789, we really didn’t feel we could change the name. It kind of had to stay Cooke’s. We tried to operate it as that,” Welch says. They kept a higher-end menu, with dishes like prime rib and baked stuffed shrimp, and continued working hard, 80 to 100 hours a week, to persevere.
As the 1980s economy began to recover, then boom, the two would look around and see their peers succeeding. “Big restaurants that were doing really really well, [with] multiple locations, huge numbers,” Welch says. “We would look at them and think, ‘How do they do that? Why can’t that be us?'”
What helped them was a strong knowledge of numbers, thanks to their previous years in corporate restaurant work with the Steak and Ale chain, and careful, methodical spending. Any extra nickel would go back into the tavern, and if that meant the owners would forego their own paychecks to make payroll, they’d do it.
“I use the analogy that we were the tortoise,” Welch says. “We didn’t know we were the tortoise. We wanted to be the hare, but we couldn’t. One day we woke up and we were doing some pretty respectable numbers, the restaurant was doing really well, we were getting some pretty good accolades. … We started to look around and we were doing well, and [those] other restaurants weren’t around anymore.”
However, Welch says, “we had major bumps over the years that could’ve put us out of business.”
The review that changed everything
One of those bumps came in the form of a brutal write-up of the restaurant in July 1986, by Jane and Michael Stern, then critics for The Courant’s Northeast Magazine publication. The acrid, no-star review slammed virtually everything about the restaurant: its pricing, the bread and honey butter, the excessively hard shell of a lobster, the “unpleasant” material of its tablecloths and napkins.
The owners were stunned, penning their own letter to the editor in defense of the restaurant. Five other Cooke’s employees did the same, as did the then-president of the Plainville Chamber of Commerce. Northeast Magazine also ran excerpts from about three dozen more reader letters in response to the review, the majority of them sharing their own positive dining experiences there.
“We had a choice. We could basically give up and lose everything, or move forward,” Adams says. “And we moved forward. … We’re extremely fortunate to still be here.”
Going casual, and the birth of the ‘dirt wings’
In early 1988, Cooke’s Tavern made the transition to the more casual concept that visitors know today: a welcoming pub atmosphere with laid-back and comforting food options: Reubens, nachos, French dip sandwiches. The new format necessitated a name change, the owners decided, and after staff brainstorm sessions, it took shape: J. Timothy’s Taverne, merging Adams’ and Welch’s first names.
Longtime general manager Greg Gardner says they began to experiment with themed nights at the bar, generating happy hour business with promotions like Nacho Tuesdays with Corona beers. A Bucket Night Wednesday deal, offering a paper bucket full of chicken wings and a bucket of Rolling Rock beers, was the only one to stick, he says. “It caught on, [took on] a life of its own, and just grew, grew, grew.”
That evolution led to the discovery of J. Timothy’s now-signature menu item, its “dirt wings,” which are fried and sauced, then fried and sauced a second time. As restaurant legend goes, they get their moniker from a guest who played on the restaurant’s softball team years ago. His nickname was Dirt, “as in, older than dirt.”
“He’d get up, go outside, go have a smoke, go talk to somebody, and come back and his wings were cold,” Gardner says. Dirt would ask the kitchen to throw them back in the fryer. The cooks would re-sauce the refried wings, and the now-famous crispy, caramelized texture became a favorite, after regulars began to try Dirt’s version and ask for theirs to be prepared the same.
Gardner says the kitchen initially resisted the process, as the sauce on the wings would quickly befoul the cooking oil when they were fried a second time.
“We weren’t thrilled about it,” he says, laughing. “[We said] this is awful, because the more people that are doing this, it’s killing our oil. We fought it, we fought it.” But they relented, and eventually put the dirt-style wings on the permanent menu.
The wings go nationwide
The restaurant became known for the dish, and began to pick up local accolades. National attention would follow, with mentions on Thrillist (“Best Wings In Every State In America”) and The Daily Meal’s “America’s 25 Best Buffalo Wings.” In 2015, BuzzFeed included J. Timothy’s in a list of “22 Wings You Have To Try Before You Die.”
In February 2016, the restaurant made its national TV debut, with an appearance on Food Network’s “Top 5” program. The episode showcased some of “the best and most decadent bar food in the United States.”
The staff thought the original phone call from Food Network was a prank, says Nikki Vinci, who handles marketing and craft beer curation for the restaurant. But then, the network faxed over a contract to prove it was legitimate. Camera crews came to the restaurant and shot hours and hours worth of footage for the short appearance.
In advance of the episode’s airing, Gardner had the idea to sell J. Timothy’s bottled buffalo sauce via the restaurant’s website. The segment aired at 10:04 p.m., Vinci says, “and at 10:08, orders started rolling in from around the country: Washington state, Hawaii, California, Georgia.” The restaurant still sees a spike in online sales when the episode airs in reruns, Gardner says.
A second cable TV closeup came two years later, with a Travel Channel episode featuring “the country’s choicest chicken dishes,” and this time, the chicken pot pie earned spotlight alongside the famous wings. Adams says every now and then, they’ll welcome guests who say they’re on a “wing pilgrimage,” traveling through a state or multiple states they feel are necessary to complete their wing experience. “It’s amazing, the distance that people will come for this stuff. And part of that is our job, to continually execute.”
Super Bowl continues to be J. Timothy’s busiest time of year, increasing its takeout volume each year. Earlier this month, 13 tons of wings (26,000 pounds) went out the door by 6 p.m. on Feb. 2. The staff has its process “down to a science,” Gardner says, beginning to take pre-orders two weeks ahead of the date and assigning time slots for efficient pickup.
Celebrating 40 years
The restaurant has also become a local destination for craft beer, with 29 tap lines featuring 10 to 12 daily drafts from Connecticut breweries. As part of its 40th anniversary celebration, the team traveled to New England Brewing Co. in Woodbridge to help brew a collaboration beer, a German-style Kolsch, Vinci says.
J. Timothy’s is hosting an anniversary party on Feb. 26, closing the restaurant to the public for the night. All proceeds from the $40 ticket price will go toward establishing the annual J. Timothy’s Taverne John Huwe Memorial Scholarship at Plainville High School, in memory of the restaurant’s beloved friend and partner. Huwe, who died in 2017, was an integral part of the operation from day one, moving to Connecticut to be Adams’ and Welch’s opening chef at Cooke’s.
Guests willing to donate to the fund can do so on J. Timothy’s website. The restaurant will also donate $1 of every bottle of buffalo sauce sold in February.
“The people in the area have a real sense of ownership of this place,” Welch says. “People are very proud of this place. It’s really, really neat.”
“The tortoise and the hare analogy is wonderful,” Gardner says. “That’s who we are. We stuck with it, it’s paid dividends, we’ve kept our eye on the ball. It’s a very simple formula, but that’s what works.”
Leeanne Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@courant.com.
